Mark Pollock | Unbroken | Talks at Google
87Mark Pollock discusses how he helps leaders and their teams build resilience and collaborate with others so that they achieve more than they thought possible.
Unbroken by blindness in 1998, Mark became an adventure athlete competing in ultra-endurance races across deserts, mountains, and the polar ice caps, ultimately becoming the first blind person to race to the South Pole. He won silver and bronze medals for rowing at the Commonwealth Games and set up an international motivational speaking business. In 2010, a fall from a second story window nearly killed him; Mark broke his back and the damage to his spinal cord left him paralysed. Now, he is on a new expedition, exploring the intersection where humans and technology collide on his mission to cure paralysis in our lifetime.
Chairman of Collaborative Cures and founder of the global running series Run in the Dark, Mark was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and served on the Global Futures Council on Human Enhancement. He is on the Board of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (USA) and is a Wings for Life Ambassador (Europe). Author of "Making It Happen", Mark is the subject of the acclaimed documentaries Blind Man Walking and Unbreakable – The Mark Pollock Story.
He has been awarded honorary doctorates by The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and also from Queen's University Belfast. Furthermore, he holds a diploma in Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century from Harvard University, degrees from Trinity College Dublin and UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School.
To learn more about Mark’s speaking business, please visit https://www.markpollock.com/. And, for information on Collaborative Cures, please visit https://collaborativecures.com/.
Moderated by Lara Suzuki.